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5 things you need to know about Mogu'shan Palace

So, the last time your friendly five things you need to know correspondent stopped by, it was to give you five pieces of useful information about the rollicking barrel of fun that is Stormstout Brewery and its emo sister dungeon Temple of the Jade Serpent. And now we're back, with the first of the level 87 dungeons: Mogu'shan Palace! Well, I say the "first"; you actually get Mogu'shan Palace at the same time as you get Shado-pan Monastery, but Mogu'shan is the easier of the two, in my book. I would argue that its also the more fun one of the pair.

As ever, this is not intended as a walk-through. It's more a set of tips so that you can head on into the dungeon armed with just enough knowledge to be dangerous. My aim is to let you explore the dungeon for yourself without spoiling your fun while still alerting you to some useful bits of information.

That's enough introducing -- let's get going! We've zoned in, and we're in a square room with some very fancy decoration. There are lots and lots of guys wandering around here. What do we do?

1. Look at your map! Um, yes. Most obvious advice ever? Well, sure, but the reason I'm saying it for this dungeon is that if you're there for a speed run, you can really skip a lot of trash. As long as you're careful about patrols, you really only need to take out about two packs of the seven-ish in the first room, for example. Navigation is a bit complicated in parts of this dungeon, and you can save yourself a lot of time and wiping by watching your map to see where your dungeon party are off to.

Oh, and after the first boss, head to the western side of the room. There's a crescent-shaped secret staircase that appears after you've looted the chest. Run down it, and the mobs will most likely give up attacking you and go back to arguing about which clan is the greatest. You can thank me later.

The same applies once you're on your way to the final boss. If you want to, you can skip a whole lot of trash on your way down there just by making sure you're battling your way in the right direction. There are no quest items or useful things off the beaten path (at time of writing at least), so there's no reason to diverge unless you really love killing trash. Furthermore, the first "boss" is in a room absolutely packed with trash. They're not out to get you, necessarily. You're fighting in the square in the middle, but if you accidentally AoE them, they'll go from yellow to red in an instant. Careful, now!

2. Get that lion off me! Speaking of the first "boss," the reason for the scare quotes is that it's actually a set of three bosses, one after the other. When you walk into the room, they're on three sides of a pale-colored square, arguing about who's the best clan.

If you're healing, make sure your party doesn't start the battle until you're at 100% mana. You don't go out of combat at any time between the three bosses you'll be facing, so there's no occasion to sit and drink. It's possible to heal it anyway, but you will likely need your mana cooldowns to do so.

Wait, that wasn't about a lion? No, but this is. The right-hand boss of the three bosses that make up the first boss (confused yet?) has a lion. It, like Apothecary Frye in the Love is in the Air holiday boss, is currently a bit tricky to tank. It seems to be initially tauntable but then fixates on random party members and can only occasionally be pulled back to the tank. Every time I healed this dungeon, it went after me. Be ready with cooldowns, since it hits pretty hard, and DPS it down as fast as you can.

3. I'm shanked! And crushed! On the subject of tanking issues, this is a pretty short and sweet tip but well worth mentioning for my healing friends. There is a ton of crush armor flying around in the latter part of this dungeon. A literal metric ton. Anywhere you see a lion after boss number one, there's a crush armor or four just waiting to be applied to your tank. If your tank is vigilant and notices the crushing of their armor, you will be fine, but if they don't spot it, you're going to need to work pretty hard to keep them alive.

Many folks' attitude at the crossover from Cataclysm to Mists of "We are mighty! We need no CC!" is not going to help your task. And God forbid a DPSer should get one of these debuffs. It'll take their armor from so-so to paper maché. Enjoy your short stay on the floor, rogue who just out-aggroed the tank! This is also not helped by all the Shank stuns your tank will be taking. If you're a tank, be wary. If you're a healer, be fast. If you're a DPSer, be careful!

4. Avoid all the things. If the first two dungeons were all about not standing in bad and watching your debuffs, this one is all about avoidable damage. With the exception of the second boss, who really doesn't do much apart from turning into a giant lizard, the others all spend most of their time trying to kill you with avoidable abilities, like ineffective Bond villains.

In traditional Blizzard style, the trash leading up to the bosses puts you in the mindset of avoiding stuff by trying to kill you with rather obvious visual effects like lightning storms. I say obvious, but the spell effects are rather similar to some class ones. As a rule, anywhere in this dungeon, if you're not the tank and you're taking a lot of damage, move. You're probably standing in something.

Effects to avoid include any kind of spinny whirlwind thing, anything that looks like a little tornado, any cone effects on the floor anything that looks like a storm, and standing near people if you have a debuff called Conflagrate. No, healers, it's not dispellable. It blows up. And it hurts people nearby, so if you're conflagrated, take your explosion elsewhere.

5. It's a trap ... several traps? Oh, God! So many traps! And the previous tip leads us on to the final boss. This is my favorite boss so far in the new Mists dungeons, just because it's so ridiculously over the top in its mechanic! The last boss is on a platform in a room, which in true diabolical genius style, he has rigged with a huge variety of booby traps.

First things first: Do not tank him on the platform. That is way, way too small a space for your party to see what's going on. And if you can't see what's going on, you're toast!

There are knives that are fired in constant streams from the walls, slow-moving whirlwinds of weapons, wall-mounted fixating crossbows, a cone ability from the boss, and a floaty axe that draws a ring of fire around a player, then blows up what or whoever's in the ring. If you avoid all those things, you'll barely take any damage! Hurrah!

In reality, though, some of them are going to hit you. The top tip to avoid them is to have your group split into tank+melee and ranged+heals. Stand either side of the central part, level with a lion's head on the wall. At least, then, while you will still have to work at avoiding the rest, you'll be away from the streams of knives.

This guy must have bought all the cutlery in Pandaria.It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!